


all we want is to feel like all we got didn’t cost us everything

by storyofapainter



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: M/M, POV Multiple, Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-30
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2020-09-28 08:43:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20423132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storyofapainter/pseuds/storyofapainter
Summary: When Lew thinks about his family, it’s his father as foe, his mother unable and unwilling to take a side and Blanche, just a shadow, just another piece in the glass front cabinet. But this woman right here, she looks and sounds more like a friend.-Nixon family dynamics.





	all we want is to feel like all we got didn’t cost us everything

New York is full. Not only with people, crammed into sidewalks and diners and park paths, but with buildings (whole and unspoiled and ever taller) and with sounds (horns and laughter and that low rumble of never ceasing). Lewis leans close to the window as the taxi crawls through traffic, feels a tourist in the place he came from. Block by block, the city reintroduces itself and block by block he feels less welcome.

He pays the driver in front of the Plaza and the bag in the porter’s hand must be filled with his things, but Lew couldn’t name one—the most important still sitting at a desk in Europe, somehow believing he has more to prove. It’s been close to three weeks since he last saw Dick and Lew can’t stop feeling that leaving Dick in Europe means he’s left him for good. It wasn’t a no, as much as an _ I can’t decide what comes next until the job here is done _, but there will be other offers, better offers, and without Lew there to stumble drunk in his barracks, to raid his foot locker, to bully him down to the mess, who's to say Dick won’t forget him? 

Room key in hand, he wants a shower, he wants someone to cook something for him with butter, he wants to stay awake and look at a city that is not burning—but there’s his sister waiting in the lobby and that means his father can’t be far away. Blanche is perched in a gilded, high backed chair, a thin novel tented in her lap as she adjusts her hair in a hand mirror. It’s shorter than he remembers and with more curls, but like everything else about her, it is as impeccable as always. Blanche takes after their mother that way, effortlessly tidy. Doris was fond of looking at the trouble he made and saying _ Lewis makes enough of a mess for three children and Blanche is God’s way of making it up to me _and he’d hated them both for that. 

Lew wonders where Stanhope is, likely already seated in the dining room, buying a drink for some half remembered business acquaintance, unable to keep from showing off. He should have chosen hotels a little more wisely, booked under someone else’s name, but he’s been tired for four years and comfort is an animal leaning easily into his hand. Blanche hasn’t seen him yet and for a moment Lew considers a new taxi, a new hotel. New York is a city of rooms, could certainly hide him for a time, but unless Lew moves from one to another in perpetuity, he can’t outrun this homecoming. 

Blanche looks up then, and her face immediately slips into the wide grin they share, but she carts it back just as quickly. She tucks both the book and the mirror into her handbag and she’s at his side, one hand light on his elbow. 

“I know you weren’t expecting anyone, but it was either me or Stanhope,” she says before Lew can figure out how you say hello to someone you haven’t seen in years. “So please keep that in mind before you’re horrible. Also, welcome back. I’m glad you’re here.”

Lew hasn’t thought of Blanche much recently (kid sisters don’t have an easy place in war); when he had remembered she was a wisp of a girl, pigtails and piano recitals. But she was starting at Stanford when he joined up, so she couldn’t have been that young, this another trick of time, like how he feels it’s been decades since he last stood here.

“Since when do you call him Stanhope?”

He can’t remember Blanche ever using their father’s first name, a habit Lew picked up early and used to painful effect. 

“Well, you weren’t around to so I thought someone should pick up the slack.”

Lew finds he’s smiling. 

“You sure he’s not waiting in the bar?”

“Yes,” she says patiently. “But your presence will be required Friday night. I couldn't outright cancel your coming home party, just delay it. We’re having a roast with a side of passive aggression and for dessert Doris will make the situation about herself and then cry. But the wine should be passable.”

This too, is new, Doris instead of _ Mother. _ But four years anywhere will change a person, even if it’s school in California, rather than theater in Europe. When Lew thinks about his family, it’s his father as foe, his mother unable and unwilling to take a side and Blanche, just a shadow, just another piece in the glass front cabinet. But this woman right here, she looks and sounds more like a friend. 

“Lew?” she says, soft and worried and too kind.

Lewis has always had a bad habit of running toward danger (and driving and stumbling and sailing)**—**it’s why he didn’t have any trouble jumping. Today it’s not guns or bombs or burnt out bridges, it’s the deep, swift current of what everyone will expect of him now, having lived through true danger. Lew doesn’t know what he is yet, still searching for the full shape of what the waves left. The only thing Lew knows for sure is he’s alive, but even that feels unearned. 

He realizes he’s been holding his breath and lets it out, a rush that throws him off balance, a sway like the boat which already feels a lifetime ago. Blanche looks at him with alarm in her brown eyes. 

“I hoped we could have dinner tonight, but if you would rather rest, I understand. 

“No,” Lew decides, air scrambling in and out and in again. They’re both new people, aren’t they, and this is as even ground as he’s going to get. “Let’s have dinner.”

Blanche hugs him then, arms thrown around him, up onto her toes. Lew squeezes back. He’s not sure what coming home is supposed to feel like, but he wouldn’t mind if it keeps feeling something like this.

\------ 

Lewis chooses a nearby pub, small and noisy, a warm room full of people just like them, welcoming or being welcomed. The table is sticky and Blanche is wildly overdressed, but Lew is across from her and there isn’t much she wouldn’t forgive for this. She watches as Lew drinks deep, lights a cigarette, and closes his eyes. 

He looks, well, like a man who went through hell and Blanche wants to approach this with wit and grace and comfort. She wants Lew to feel better for her being here, not worse. They never did know each other well, despite growing up in the same revolving door of city brownstone and sculpted New Jersey lawn. Lew was always too old, too wild, too much of a boy for an appropriate playmate. Blanche remembers watching Lew argue with their father (money wasted, boats sunk, hearts broken). Every argument ended with Lew storming away; he ruined dinners and birthdays and vacations. Blanche looked at his dark, angry retreat and wondered why he didn’t care he was ruining their family instead of being part of it. She’s since learned how hard it can be to truly care for the people you’re obligated to love. 

“I’m sorry I didn’t write you. It wasn’t personal, I was worried and all that, but you know Doris was—"

“Long winded?”

“I was going to say prolific.”

“That’s diplomatic of you. Where did she even get that much paper? Wasn’t there supposed to be rationing going on?”

“She sent me copies of all the letters she sent to you, so I could ‘Include different news, dear’ as though there was a single word in the English language she hadn’t already sent. 

“I stopped reading them after the first couple,” Lew admits. “I did let Dick read them and he said she sounded like a riot which if you knew him is like him calling someone a—"

Lew snaps his jaw shut and she wonders, but doesn’t know how to ask, if this is a man he knew who died. Her face must give her away, because Lew shakes his head.

“You might meet him, Major Dick Winters. I offered him a job.”

“Stanhope know about that?”

“Not yet. But Dick’ll have other offers. He’s still in Europe, fighting a new war against paperwork. Chances are he’ll end up somewhere better than Nixon, NJ.”

“There’s nowhere better,” she mimics the timber of their father’s voice, his favorite mantra, the undertow of their childhoods, the lie that a namesake place will make you king. Lew’s eyes are huge. 

“That was uncanny.”

“Thank you.”

“I still can’t believe he didn’t insist on coming with you.”

“I had to bargain with Doris. Stanhope wanted you to arrive from the shipyard directly to the apartment filled with 50 of his closest friends. 

He grimaces. 

“I told her Friday is a better night for a party anyway and Lewis can get a little rest. We want him ship shape and ready to tell us stories. I have to make appearances at three bridge nights with Doris’s loony friends, as she tries to marry me off to their equally loony sons, but a small price.” 

Lewis looks for a moment like he might be angry, shoulders caught close to his ears, eyes stuck in middle distance, but it slips under after a deep breath, neatly hidden, but still there. He settles further into his chair, arm loose up to the table, to his drink. 

“You’re a peach, Blanche. I mean it.”

She nods, stiff and wary, wishes for a book of what he lived through, just to know how to avoid the missteps, but nothing of Lewis’ life would fit easily on a page.

The waiter brings their plates and they lull quiet under the noise of the room. There is a certain type of laughter, alive like its own person, here, despite everything that did not come back. 

For years she’d split Lewis into the boy before summer on the cape and the man after. Before, he was her loud, rude, rule-ignoring big brother who she didn’t understand but still loved in a hopeful, childish way. After, he was a dangerous, foreign thing, with Blanche left holding his secret like a poison ready to spread. There’s a brand new Lewis now and this one feels more real than any of the other two because Blanche has lived somewhere besides her mother’s dollhouse.

“Jesus,” Lew says suddenly. “Blanche, can you start talking about yourself? I can’t deal with this silence.”

“This is your homecoming. I am trying to not make it all about me.”

“Please do. I have nothing I want to hear myself say. And there’s a lot I don’t know about you.”

Doris says the same every time Blanche sees her, but where Doris means it as a slight, Lew sounds genuine. 

“Well,” she says after a moment, “I’m working for a women’s magazine.”

“Is that a euphemism for something?” 

“Funny. You’ve probably heard of it—McCalls—Doris used to subscribe, actually, before the war. I’m mostly doing research, but last month I wrote a small piece about “Coats for Cold Weather.” Nothing really consequential, but it was my name in print and everything.” 

“No kidding. That’s fantastic.” 

“Doris wants me to quit, of course. She hates that I got a job to start with and is even more upset that I’m doing well. She’s convinced I’ll never find a husband if I insist on being ambitious.”

“I wouldn’t describe anyone I met in the army as a gentleman, so I don’t have anyone to introduce you to.”

“Not even Major Winters?”

Lew’s face does something complicated.

“Dick is too much of a gentleman.”

Blanche isn’t sure what Lew is trying to say, but he looks like he’s wishing he hadn’t said it, like she shouldn’t have brought Major Winters up at all. 

“Well, that’s just fine because I’m not in any rush. I’m not saying I’m Shakespeare or anything, but I want to write something that matters, you know, and I don’t need anyone else asking me to stop.”

His face has slipped into what she, even hours ago, might have read misread as neutral, but there’s a cavern there and there’s something buried in it. 

“You should stick with it. I know you’re damn good.”

She feels the blush creep up, even warmer in this crowded room.

“You don’t know that— Lew, you’ve never even read anything I’ve written.”

“Blanche, you’re good at everything. You always have been. Even the accordion which is too confusing for anyone to be good at.”

Blanche knows it looked that way to teenage Lewis, his meek, overachieving little sister. The truth is she was very good at the specific things her mother wanted her to master because those were the only things she was allowed to do. 

“I’ve never been good enough either.”

Lewis smirks and drinks and drinks again. 

“Come on, Blanche. You don’t have to be modest. We both know you’re the favorite.“

“I can’t carry on the Nixon name. So everything I do has an expiration date.”

No one can accuse Stanhope of being a sentimental man, except when it comes to Yale, to seeing Lewis in the same blue and white, sending him to study in Sheffield Hall, row at Gales Ferry. Blanche had always known she would never go, but it hadn’t been unfair until they packed Lewis onto the train, off to _the_ place to make a man, formative and transformative and locked tight. When she asked if there were other schools that would allow her to study, Doris has tutted and said, “Yes, but why would you want to, dear?” and Stanhope had flipped the fold of his newspaper, stirred his coffee and muttered, “Doris, what could it hurt?”

So Blanche did her research and marched with letters in hand, up the stairs and across the hall to Stanhope’s office so he could help her choose. The door was ajar and he was on the telephone, so she leaned on the wall to wait, shoulders bowed, smoothing out the pages against her skirt. Blanche still doesn’t know who he was talking to, just what he said, how he laughed and told someone,** “**We’re letting Blanche go wherever will take her because it’ll be a year, at most, before she’s married and this way there’s a chance he’ll be someone with ambition. It’s a pity he won’t be a Bulldog, but I thank the Lord every Sunday that Yale is keeping tradition strong. Imagine women in the Colony.”

Her first thought was to cry and her second was to yell. The third was to tell him Lewis’ secret—see if he’d still think so little of her after knowing that about him—and she held that possibility long enough for Stanhope to find her there. 

“Blanche? What are you doing up here?”

“Stanford,” she said instead, heartbeat steadier than it ever had been looking his way. “That’s where.” 

Blanche had pretended good and well that Lewis’ was the type of secret to gain entropy, to give her power over another, but in that overdressed hallway of her childhood, drowning in the truth that her father would always look a little past her (focus straying ever on to Lewis, always more valuable, no matter the cost) she realized what she knew had only truly mattered in the immediate moments after. And even then, even if Lewis and that boy had been seen by someone less _ her_, would Stanhope have truly let something like that change a damn thing? 

“That’s bullshit,” Lewis says, true fire in his voice. “You’re worth more than a stupid name. And marriage isn’t all it’s cracked up to be anyway.” 

Blanche wants to tell him the truth right then, what she saw, what she knows, how she’s learned to love him through it. But tonight is not the time or place for such large mountains so she finds a peak to settle on instead.

“Lew, I never thought Kathy was right for you. I know with the baby you made a choice in that moment, but honestly, you’re both much better off apart. You two made each other unhappy like it was a sport.”

Lew is gaping at her.

“Unless,” she hedges, hand a little tighter on her glass. “I’ve read this all very wrong and Kathy is actually the love of your life, in which case my deepest condolences.”

Lewis laughs and it’s not just a sound, not just his face that changes, it’s his whole body letting something go 

“You know she took the dog.”

Doris shared that news in her odd, dreamy way, still believing everything was a sign that Lewis and Kathy would become completely different people and love each other. 

“That hag. Good thing you can get a new dog now. Hell, you can get a whole pack. Leave the nitration to Stanhope and go breed dogs.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” Lew says, leaning back in his chair. “Not a bad idea at all.”

Blanche takes a taxi home and lingers for a moment on her front steps, the world just starting to crisp and fog. She’s thinking about summer, about the ocean. About all the different ways you can protect someone. 

\------

“A toast,” Stanhope says, glass of champagne raised. “To my son, Lewis Nixon. A braver man than I ever thought he’d be.” 

It’s the roast at table center, neat lines of forks, and strict creased linen. It’s a dozen pairs of eyes turned toward him, Stanhope’s (un)important guests, each more unbearable than the last: Men hungry for stories, their own not enough to keep them full. Women with hands ready to stitch him up with cloth and cotton thread, like that could cover a graveyard.

To the untrained ear this is a father reaching out to a son, proud and grateful. To Lewis it’s a test he’s meant to keep failing. 

The thing about family is you’re born into one and then they raise you. And it goes well or it doesn’t. But you can’t always tell which it is as it happens. Lewis was a boy with prep school and money who never met a suggestion he didn’t take. Stanhope would hold the bills, threaten the end of his freedom, shout back louder, but he never actually took anything away. _ I’d have done it too, _ was what Stanhope had always told him later in his study, tempers cooled, _ just a little differently; _ words to live by until the moment they started feeling like words to die by. 

Yale, a week old, Introduction to Engineering, the professor looking hard at Lewis after he introduced himself. 

“Not related to Stanhope, are we?” 

And it was 18 years of being told his name was the most important thing about him that said _ yes, _ bold and sure and with a cliff he couldn’t see coming. 

“Well,” his professor had said, smile a knife twisting, “Let’s all hope you don’t turn out much like him.”

“Successful?”

“Your father beat a man half to death with an iron bolt. Drunk of course. Then he withdrew before we had the pleasure of expelling him. Do be sure to tell him I’m the one who told you.”

Lewis had opened his mouth to call the man a liar, but leaving school before graduation was part of the myth Stanhope built, that he’d already had everything he needed, that _everyone needs something different to be successful, Lewis,_ _and you shouldn’t be ashamed you’ll need more time to learn it all. _Every compliment and promise and prediction that he was and would always be just like his father crumpled into warning. Had he ever before met, Lewis wondered, anyone at all who wasn’t somehow paid by or eager to stay on Stanhope’s good side? 

It was one night. It was decades past. It was violent enough to echo. It was something he knows Stanhope will expect him to forgive, move neatly past with all the power and grace of men like them. But Lewis doesn’t want to be men like them. He’d had thought his father was waiting on the edge, ready to pull him back from the tumble, but Stanhope would have watched him fall, wouldn’t he have? Because when Stanhope fell he never hit the bottom.

Kathy was supposed to be Lewis, escaping. Charming women had always been easy for Lew, something about his face or his wallet or his reckless abandon. Kathy was different, she wasn’t impressed and she wasn’t interested and usually Lewis just kept walking down the line, but here (“I’m embarrassed for you,” she’d said after he’d tried flowers and candy and jewelry. “I’d rather you didn’t try again, but when you do, some actual effort would be appreciated.”) his heart insisted. So he chased and when she did say yes, it felt like the most important thing he had ever earned. They were going to build, new and beautiful, a place for themselves, for their daughter, for their dog. Lew thought because this had taken them more—time, fights, patience—that their love would last, already tested and true. But the only more Kathy wanted was less and less and then none of him. 

Lewis’ next move tonight is supposed to be drunk and rowdy and rude. He’s supposed to point out the slight, throw an insult back, keep his hand outstretched toward the hot stove, scar next to scar next to scar. If he hadn’t survived a goddamn war, if Blanche hadn’t grown up into a person he wants to know, if there wasn’t a telegram in his pocket (held like a bird in hand, soft not to spook, slipped safe against his own body) he would have been all that and more. Lew looks at Blanche across the table, tensed and ready to defuse the blaze she thinks is coming and he loves her for it. _ This _ , Lew thinks, _ is what we fought for. _ With one hand in his pocket and the other raising his glass higher, Lew smiles, wide and happy as he can, looking every inch the grateful, loving son and volleys back.

“Thank you, Dad. I couldn’t have done it without your support.”

Defiance doesn’t always look like disobedience. Sometimes it’s telling the other person what they want to hear, grinning in their face, and making sure they’re the only one who knows you’re lying. 

The table around them merrily clinks their glasses, echoing, _To_ _Lewis! _and the noise rises again, a traditional Nixon party, host left unsatisfied. 

Lew empties his glass and pretends he can feel the individual letters in his pocket, one after the other, in tight type, spelling out: _ new jersey by xmas _

\------

“I wonder if Aurora even noticed the vintage of the wine—she certainly poured enough of it. Poor thing has no idea how to pair wine—the last time she hosted she tried to serve a red with fish. Jerry could have married much better.” 

Doris sighs, like all the ills of the world are tied to one man’s choice in wife. 

“He may not regret it yet, but give it a couple more years and he’ll see.”

Blanche pulls the pie closer to her, crust crumbling fine onto the tablecloth as she cuts a piece. 

“Blanche, please use a plate if you must eat that, but I’m sure you already had a piece after dinner. A lady should never have more than those around her.”

Blanche brushes the crumbs away, hand itching to cut a third slice. She has been here many times before, in a kitchen with Doris, in the aftermath of a party. As a child it was a privilege, a peek under the curtain at the glamour she’d have one day, the events she’d host. Blanche would wrap herself in a pink quilted robe with matching slippers and Doris, pearls still heavy around her neck, would relive each technicolor moment. It took years before Blanche understood Doris hadn’t made all those clever comments or brilliant jokes or been thanked quite as fervently by as large a crowd. For everything Blanche wishes her mother hadn’t given her, she’ll always be grateful for learning how to tell a good story.

“Did you notice, Blanche, how everyone admired the dianthus in the centerpiece? I knew it would be just the right mixture of classic and unexpected.” 

Behind her back, the women of Doris’ many societies and groups call it the Nixon Classic, how Doris is always standing at just enough distance to take the credit and assign the blame. It was Blanche who thought of the dianthus in place of roses, who chose a menu with a mix of pre-war staples and Lewis’ favorites. She’d managed the guest list down to 20, intervened when Doris had her heart set on a live band, and absolutely forbid inviting Kathy (honestly, Kathy). But it was Doris at room center, pressing each compliment for a second, cataloguing faux pas like pelts to sell at market.

“Lewis could have been more engaged—it was his party and he spent it acting like this was all some chore. I was so careful about sitting him near Clara because her daughter is just darling, but I don’t believe he even looked her way. Lewis doesn’t have time to waste or all the good ones will be taken.”

Her mother arcs perpetually toward selfish, but Blanche does not understand how a person can look at Lewis and honestly not see a man struggling to stand up on this once familiar shore. She should say it. She should take Doris’ hand in hers, fingers tight to pull attention, and tell her what she cannot see. Blanche starts to reach, heartbeat strong in her throat, but there is a rush of footsteps and Lewis swings around the doorframe.

“Blanche, can I walk you out?” 

She hasn’t a chance to answer before Stanhope catches up, pushing himself fully into the kitchen. Blanche cannot remember the last time all four of them were in this room. Stanhope’s jaw is working, his face is flushed. Lew looks like a cloudless day, leaning casual and calm against the door frame.

“All the guests are gone. We don’t need to make a scene of this, Stanhope.**”**

With how sharply Stanhope pulls back, it’s as though Lewis has advanced, rather than stay posted, still and steady. 

“The only thing I am making is myself very clear about is how short my patience is. I am trying once again to teach you something about how men handle themselves. Your troubles have always been of your own making because you suffer from an inability to listen to those who know better. What good are the things you did if you can’t run the business here, if you can’t keep your wife? Your place at Nixon Nitration is a privilege. It is not something you have earned.”

Blanche expects this to be the moment Lewis sets himself free: he’ll deliver two or three choice insults and then vanish behind the door frame, his teenage threat of never coming home again finally fulfilled**, **but the exhale doesn’t come.

“I understand. I know I have to do better,” he says instead, cool and heavy as dead winter. **“**When should I be in Nixon?”

Stanhope looks the room over before he answers, like the gingham and white trim might be able to help explain why while it sounds like he’s won something, it feels like he’s lost.

“Monday morning, 7am. I do mean it, Lewis. This is your last chance. Your very last.”

“Yes,” he nods. “That’s only fair. Blanche?” 

Lewis kisses Doris on the cheek, drops a brief hand to Stanhope’s shoulder and strides from the room. Blanche takes the rest of the pie as she follows. They make it to the far side of the front gate before they can no longer hold their laughter, leaning into each other’s shoulders. 

“He looked like he swallowed a bee.”

“I thought Doris was going to fall out of her chair when I said goodnight.”

“Do you think either one of them has managed to leave the kitchen yet?”

“I’m not sure Stanhope knows his way out.”

“You know,” Blanche says after their laughter fades. “I thought you’d have taken that chance to be done with Nixon. With Stanhope.”

Lew shrugs and leans out of the low yellowed light of the antique carriage lamp Doris insisted hang above the gate. He feels far away, like the dark is adding distance.

“Do you want to know what the paratroopers taught me?" 

“How to erase what little was left of your sense of self preservation?" 

“Fair. But they also taught me how to fight the right battles.”

“Like what?”

Blanche watches him turn on the spot, slow like he’s seeing more than a tree-lined street, more than brick and flower beds. 

**“**Like— Like not Stanhope. The people like him who think never changing their minds is a sign of character. I thought the hardest about coming back would be everything that changed when I was gone, but it’s actually the things that stayed the same.”

Camouflaged in handshakes and flatware, their parents live three inches in front of their own faces, suffocating, how narrow the hallway they pace. Blanche never wants to be that close, to lose range and wonder, to forget the breadth of the world is the point, not the enemy. 

“I wouldn’t hold my breath for them, but Lewis, listen, tomorrow night, if you don’t have anyone else to see before you go to Nixon, there’s a club I know which I think you’ll like.”

Lewis looks her full in the face, searching, and she’s not sure if the laughs means he did or did not find what he wanted. 

“Blanche, and I mean this kindly, we have very different tastes.”

She thinks but does not say, _ not as different as you think_. 

“If you hate it, then we can go wherever you want and I won’t be offended. This is my treat. Please?”

“What type of club is it? You know I don’t dance. I don’t want to end up in some absurd marathon, foxtrotting all night.”

“A surprise.”

Lewis makes a face at her and she makes one back. Blanche can see the give of his shoulders in the moment before his voice reflects.

“Alright.”

“Splendid. I’ll meet you outside the Plaza at 9:30.”

“9:30?”

“Well, Lewis, it’s not the type of place that’s open during the day.” 

“Haha,” he says and starts to walk toward the corner. “Come on, let’s find you a taxi.”

Lingering under the carriage lamp, time is a suspended thing, and Blanche considers she may be wrong. That what she saw on that beach was a mistake he never made again. That this will forever burn what little trust they’ve built. She could still undo it, take Lewis to any old bar, let the past settle like silt under the ocean, but sometimes the only way to even ground is to shake the world first.

\------

Lew is almost late meeting Blanche because he keeps changing his shirt. He’s suspicious of her secrecy; the obvious answer to why she didn’t just tell him they’re going to whichever place graces the pages of the tabloids these days is that they’re not. Lewis hopes Blanche isn’t trying to take him somewhere without an easily accessible bar like, god forbid, the opera. 

Blanche looks him over as he slides into the dim taxi, face neutral. She’s wearing a dark wool coat and her lips are very red, neither of which goes any distance to making him feel better. 

“What, should I have worn a tux? When you keep secrets about where we’re going, you can’t complain about what I wear.”

“No. You look wonderful Lew. Absolutely show-stopping actually. A pinnacle—"

“Stop,” he says, but he’s laughing.

“Is it strange, being able to choose what you wear again?”

It is, but all Lew can do is nod because he can count the amount of times he’s seen Dick out of uniform on one hand. What will that be like, seeing it everyday, a new default overwriting the original? He needs to find a new place to live in Nixon and maybe they can live together. He could find a house, big enough so they won’t get tired of each other, but small enough to feel like a home. They’ve already lived a whole life together, brushed past the edges of death, and woke up to find a new life waiting, whether or not they (Lew) deserve it. Almost every moment he lived with Dick was against the backdrop of bombs and worry, years worth of fury and fear. In Nixon, Lew plans to make an art of slow living. They’ll always have time for that second cup of coffee, to take the longer road beside the river, to sit on the front steps and watch the world walk around. How clearly he can see the two of them, in tall chairs by a bright front window, Dick reading the paper, Lew pretending to. This is the best type of bad idea: the kind that could make him happier or sadder than he has ever been before with no inbetween.

When Blanche pokes his arm to shoo him out of the taxi, he’s still caught in slow and steady and the city around him is a surprise. He catches a glimpse of a street sign and this is far from what he’d assumed to be Blanche’s usual area. 

“Walk,” she says and leads him two more blocks before taking a set of steps down to the basement door of a squat, brick building. Lewis stops at the mouth of it; Blanche has sunk enough that she’s mostly in shadow and all the hair on the back of his neck is up. Lew knows this is New York City, but for a breath it feels like Eindhoven, like the Ardennes.

“Where the hell are we going? Are you trying to get us killed?” 

Blanche huffs and marches back to grab his arm. 

“The door is right here, if you will just move.” 

Lew stumbles a little down the steps, but catches himself at the landing, wonders if it’s too soon to insist they leave. Blanche knocks on the door and it swings open slowly to show a dim hallway, heavy curtain at the far end. There’s a tall man inside, Lew’s age with deep set eyes, hair combed steeply to the left, and a plum jacket. 

“Good to see you,” he says to Blanche, voice a low and gravely pull against Lew’s chest. He coughs to get around it. 

“You too,” Blanche answers, smile bright enough to catch. 

“Have a nice night,” the man says as he pulls back the curtain and Lew swears his gaze passes right over Blanche and her brilliant grin, lingers on him instead, but he’s not brave enough to look back. 

On the other side of the curtain are low ceilings and amber lights. A piano cuts across the conversation, a tune he doesn’t recognize. Lew looks across the dance floor, eyes sliding thankfully to the bar tucked against the far wall, and then snapping back because there are men and women dancing, but they are not dancing with each other. 

To his right a man with unnaturally blonde hair and light blue suspenders is talking to Blanche, but he can’t hear what they’re saying, because the only thing he can hear is his heart. His ears are too warm and his hands are so cold. Does Blanche not know where she brought them? Is a friend of hers playing a trick? But the man at the front knew her, Blanche has been here before, could she— 

“Blanche,” he forces out, grabbing for her arm. She turns immediately from the man, entire focus on him, her dark eyes too calm for the storm in Lew’s chest. “Is this a joke or something?” 

“No, of course it’s not. I know it couldn’t of been easy for you during the war. I thought you deserved a real homecoming.”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.” 

He’s turning already, set to walk out and just keep going all the way to Nixon, because there is nothing, absolutely nothing on this continent that could have given him away. 

**“**Provincetown,” Blanche says, so soft like she’s saying _ I’m sorry _ instead and a decade of Lew’s life rearranges itself around that word. 

Lewis was seventeen and reckless. The Nixons were vacationing on the coast and there was another family, a man Stanhope knew from shipping, who also had a son, same age as Lew and just as reckless. Lew has lived ever since thinking he got away with it. That this was a true secret, the stuff for graves. 

“I saw you two. You were coming back from swimming one night and you—” 

It was a dare, _jump in the water in the dark, naked, hope the fish don’t bite. _And they’d looked at each other, he and Eli, and Lew doesn’t remember who said _i’ll do it if you do it too_, but the other agreed and they’d sprinted to the edge of the pier, a race of distance run and clothes shed. In the dark they were the last men on earth and when Eli reached for him, Lew went. 

He can’t keep looking at Blanche. She wasn’t even fifteen that summer, still their mother’s shadow, quick to tattle. This should have been a three alarm fire, a dragon at the gate. He can’t believe she kept this kind of secret for him. 

“Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

Blanche hesitates. 

“I was choosing the moment to hurt you the most. But when I had one, turns out I didn’t want to anymore.” 

Lewis hadn’t been expecting it when the intake psychiatrist had followed up his question about general family history of mental illness with _have you ever had a homosexual experience,_ but it was easy to feel the weight of his wedding ring and lie _no, I never_. In camp, there were rumors about the men who were too particular, too sissy, bitten off conversations about those who disappeared from training, _do you think he was a section eight— caught behind the— not him, but last week for sure—_

It was just another thread in a fast unfurling flag**, **until it caught. Until he stumbled onto a report out of the 82nd, typed pages of the court-martials, the prison time, the dishonorable discharges, the contact with the men’s families. Lewis’ hand twitched in a blind grasp for his open bottle. The war took lives and blood and sleep and certainty and the peace of snow-covered ground. That it would take even more clawed red into his chest. There are things that matter, things that make a man brave, make him worth following. Those things aren’t found in the complicated weave of desire. Lewis closed the file and knew it could have been him given a world that hadn’t spun him to orbit Dick, given an ounce more of self destruct. He’s thought about what it would mean for someone to know this about him and every time it unwove a nightmare, not a warm room like this, little sister arm to arm. 

“You’ve been here before.” 

Blanche nods. 

“I met Neil at Stanford. He’s from New York too and when we were missing the city we’d go look across the bay and pretend it was the Hudson instead. Neil came back too after we graduated and decided a place like this is not a bad way to spend his family’s money.” 

Of everything Lewis has felt since coming back, this is most untethered. He knew his life would change, home from war, but not anything like this. Blanche reaches for his arm and Lew only half feels when her fingers close on his jacket. 

“We can go if you like. I’m sorry for this, Lewis, I shouldn’t have done it in public. I wanted you to know I knew, but maybe this wasn’t the right way—" 

“They’ve alcohol here?” 

He cuts in over her worry, because Blanche is right to be a little sorry for this (softer type of) ambush, but if she had sat him down in her living room with a quilt across his chair and tea with milk and tried to talk to him about it, he wouldn’t have listened. 

“Of course they do.” 

“You said you were paying and a Nixon never turns down a drink.” 

It sounded less uncertain in his head, but when Blanche tightens her grip on his arm, he feels all five fingers, warm and steady. 

“Lew, I am very glad you came home.” 

He is too, of course, but if the world truly isn’t done granting gifts, if Dick does make it here by Christmas, if he really takes the job, if Europe or the Army or some lucky, lucky girl doesn’t swoop in to hold him. If he gets off the boat in New York and takes the train south, if his red hair graces that colorless town. If he shakes Stanhope’s hand and makes the best first impression a man can. If he gets a desk and then an office and then maybe the company. If Dick Winters settles in Nixon, New Jersey, Lewis knows he can’t ever introduce him to Blanche because it will take her one breath to see how much Lewis loves him. 

\------

_ Six months later _

\------

Blanche is patient as Lewis unfolds his new leaf**,** but there is a difference between being busy (giving a damn about your job takes up a surprising amount of one’s time) and avoiding someone. Lewis crosses smoothly into the latter on a Thursday in late March. He’s stumbling through another excuse about why he can’t come up to New York, not even for a night, because the army friend he’d gotten a job for is still settling in. Lewis seems to have forgotten Blanche knows Nixon doesn’t have much that needs settling into. 

“Lewis, if he invaded Europe I’m sure he’s fine being alone for an evening. In fact I bet he’d appreciate it, being friends with you. Or bring him along. Like people do with their friends.” 

“He doesn’t drink.” 

“He eats, doesn’t he?”

Lewis makes a frustrated noise and Blanche wants to tell him he doth protest too much, but over-the-phone-Lewis is clearly a lost cause. 

“If you’re sure, Lew,” she says instead, a little too sweet, a little too casual. “Of course we can have dinner another time. You come up when you’re ready.” 

Nixon is not a picturesque place, even when it’s grass and blooming trees instead of mud and bare branches, washed out in the weak light of spring, trying. It’s a single word which ties on tight, pride disproportionate to the space, still too much the echo of disaster. But it’s home too, the family house less used the older they are, but kept dusted and mopped, a sin not to be ready. 

The plant itself looked much larger when she was a child, a sprawling maze, her father’s kingdom. Today it looks like any other collection of buildings which could do any number of things. Inside the low brick annex that holds the offices, she finds Stanhope’s long suffering secretary, Mrs. Walton. She must be close to 70 now, but looks exactly the same: blonde hair in the stiffest curl Blanche has ever seen, glasses slipping down her nose, white blouse with black buttons shaped like roses. The guilt hits just as Mrs. Walton notices her—Blanche can’t deny she was anything but an entitled brat each and every time she was made to visit her father at work. 

“Miss Nixon, my word, you are all grown now,” Mrs. Walton says, but her broad smile is undercut as she continues. “Mr. Nixon didn’t mention you’d be visiting.” 

Blanche isn’t certain if she’s talking about Stanhope or Lewis, but the answer is the same. 

“He doesn’t know yet. It’s a surprise visit.” 

“That is very sweet of you. It’s not someone’s birthday, is it?” 

“No, Lewis has been so busy here, I haven’t seen him in months and the least I could do was make the trip.”

“Mr. Nixon is keeping the other Mr. Nixon busy.” 

She looks at the phone on her desk like she’s expecting it to ring or maybe like she’s hoping it will. Why had Doris even brought them here? Stanhope never had the time to see them, so the office was instead treated to Doris’s social schedule and inflated self importance—which is of course just what her mother was looking for. The woman loves a captive (if unwilling) audience. 

“Mrs. Walton, I’m—well, I’m sorry for being so awful as child when I visited. I didn’t know better, but that’s not really an excuse.**”**

Mrs. Walton pushes her glasses back into place, blinking as though Blanche is just now coming into focus. 

“That is kind of you to say, Miss Nixon.”

“Please, call me Blanche.” 

Mrs. Walton looks her up and down and then extends her hand.

“Abigail." 

Blanche shakes and then startles as a door slams open on the far wall, men crossing through on their way to lunch. 

“Abigail,” she says carefully, “Do you happen to know Mr. Winters?” 

“Well, I should have guessed. Half the girls in two counties have come looking for him. I’d say you’ve likely got a better chance since he and Mr. Nixon are such good friends.” 

“Oh, I’m not looking for a husband at the moment.” 

“I suspect your mother doesn’t like that.” 

Blanche turns back to Abigail, who has a wondrous smile on her face. 

“No, she does not.”

“That’s him, there, with the red hair. And don’t feel like you can’t change your mind, Blanche. He’s a good egg, that man.”

“Thank you,” she says, and Abigail squeezes her hand. 

Blanche crosses toward him, calling out. 

“Mr. Winters—"

He stops immediately and turns with an open and eager face. 

“Hello, I’m Blanche—” 

“Nixon,” he finishes, eyes wide, hand reaching out to shake hers. 

“That’s right.” 

“Richard Winters. Dick. It’s a pleasure to meet you. Lewis didn’t mention that you were in town.” 

“Oh, Lew doesn’t know. He’s decided he doesn’t have the time to visit New York anymore, so here I am instead. Surprise.” 

He laughs and there’s some calculation in his gaze. 

“No surprise you and Nix are related.” 

Blanche can see why women have come asking and it isn’t just the summer blue eyes or shock of copper hair. Dick Winters is calm**. **He’s steady**. **Blanche is certain if she were to drop in a sudden faint, he wouldn't let her hit the floor. They are doing nothing more than standing in a public place, a few dozen words between them, but she’ll already take many dozens more. 

“Please tell me you’ll be able to join us for dinner tonight?” 

“Me?” 

“Lew’s told me a bit about you and I have to know what to believe.”

“Probably none of it,” Dick says with the flash of a grin. “Sounds like I have no choice but to defend my honor.” 

“Rosemaries? 8:00?” 

Dick shakes her hand again and Blanche watches him cross the annex toward the canteen, greeting everyone he meets by name. What an undeserved gift Lew has brought here for Stanhope.

\------

There’s someone in his office, shape visible through the frosted pane**. **Lew knows it’s not Dick, gone to lunch with the foreman. He hopes it’s not Stanhope, who is supposed to be in Ohio this week, some meeting about distribution. Lewis creaks the door open, anticipating a long winded explanation about why Stanhope had to return early and how it is absolutely, no way around it, Lewis’ fault. But it’s not his father, it’s Blanche. 

“What the hell are you doing here?” 

“You might be too busy to come up to the city, but I have more than enough time to come down to good old Nixon.”

“You’re awful. Well, now you’ve seen me and shit, I’m busy today and tomorrow and the next day, too. Sorry you wasted a trip. I can take you to the train.”

“First, I drove down. Second, I want to meet your war buddy who doesn’t drink.” 

“He’s not interested.”

Blanche smiles sharply. 

“That’s not what Mr. Winters said when we chatted. In fact, we’re all meeting at Rosemaries at 8:00 for dinner. Early bird and all that.” 

Lew shakes his head. 

“Get the hell out of my office.” 

“Don’t be late.” 

She snaps the door shut and Lew slouches low in his chair. 

Dick arrived in a snowstorm, train inching on iced tracks, Lew shivering in his car imagining every scenario where Dick isn’t on the train after all. But through the flurries, a man missing a hat turned and smiled bright enough to warm him. 

Lewis made a careful plan. The first step was convincing Dick he didn’t need the dreary company housing (“I’m not looking to be special,” Dick tried to argue. “Well you fucking are,” Lewis grumbled. “It’s too much house for one person and I need someone to make sure I eat my vegetables.”). The second step was Stanhope (which turned out to be the easy part, Dick effortless in his competency, Stanhope with praise like he’d found the man himself**)**. Next came convincing Dick to stay, that Lewis doesn’t mind a thing about him: his tuneless brand of humming, forever giving rides to workers he spots on the road’s edge, books stacked three deep on every flat surface, toast burnt to hell. 

To those looking, he and Dick are war buddies re-entering the world; they are bachelors biding time. Work is, for the first time, just that. Lewis shows up in the morning, does most of what he’s told and how well done or not matters less than if Dick will laugh at the story he tells at dinner. The women of central Jersey are lining up, Dick polite enough to accept the invitations of those bold enough to do the asking. Lewis tries a double date, but just the once because it is literally painful (something in his chest that doesn’t fully expand) to pay attention to anyone else when Dick leans an elbow on the table, talks about fertilizer with authority. The rest of the time it’s Lew alone in the living room, eyes on the empty chair, hand around a glass. 

(There are other moments, the ones Lew hates to think about—soft morning as he stands in their kitchen to refill the coffee before Dick asks, shadowed dusk to push down the curve of Dick’s smile as Lew jokes if any of the dates will ever become second ones—when he’s just lonely enough to let himself believe he’s recognized some part of the look on Dick’s face as the one on his own.)

Tonight, Blanche is going to see him, like no one else can, lovesick and foolish. He doesn’t want the pity. He doesn’t want to see wild, groundless hope on someone else’s face. Lewis is tired. He’s been slowly weaving them closer, stitches small enough that maybe Dick won’t see until they’re tangled together enough for keeps. But the truth is Lewis knows, despite any hope or wish or trick of the light, how their story will end: they spend a year or two like this (what he wants, swimming ever closer to the surface of the morning lit lake), before Dick answers the call of Pennsylvania farmland, before the tri-state area flings forth the right woman, before they promise to write and Lew doesn’t keep it.

\------

The very first thing Lew does after they’re seated is knock a glass of water onto the floor. Blanche knows he would rather she hadn’t come, but this is just dinner, a meal he presumably eats every day. Lew’s acting like Stanhope is there, like someone is going to be disappointed when he uses the wrong fork. The maître d′ swoops in with a towel and a red faced Lewis busies himself with the menu even though he always orders the stroganoff. 

Blanche can’t look right at him, head bowed like that, so she focuses on Dick Winters instead, who cleans up very nicely. 

“Is your family from New York?” 

“Pennsylvania. My parents own a farm there.”

“Lewis and I visited a farm once. He jumped into the pig pen.” 

“Blanche,” Lewis grits out, giving up the pretense of his menu. “Is it absolutely necessary to tell this story?” 

“Yes,” she and Dick say at the same time and Lewis waves her on while shaking his head. 

**“**One summer Doris decides we need to visit these distant cousins for reasons only Doris herself understands. Now, she grew up in Albany, not on a farm, but near them. I guess she’d forgotten how absolutely everything you do on a farm involves some degree of dirt. Doris can’t stand dirt. So we’re not allowed to do anything except sit on the porch and read books. I’m nine and love nothing more so it’s the best trip of my life. But Lewis, of course, gets sick of it right away—"

Dick is laughing with his fist pressed to his mouth. 

“And you jump into the pig pen.” 

“And I jump into the pig pen. I can still hear the squelch from when I landed. And Doris shrieking.” 

“She made him bathe seven times and then insisted the smell was lingering for days after. She plugged her nose whenever he was nearby. His own mother.” 

“The water was not warm,” Lewis adds. 

“And to think I was worried about taking you to Lancaster**. **Turns out you're a natural farm hand.” 

“We have to visit Chicago first.”

“That we do.” 

The waiter interrupts and they order and Blanche tries to temper judgement. Remind herself these are men who served together, have a bond the likes she cannot fathom. Just because this looks like something else doesn’t mean it is. 

Except when Lew abandons his stroganoff mid-bite to tell her about the Rita Hayworth film they saw recently and Dick more than knows the story, he saw the film too, but he’s not just listening, he’s reveling. Dick reaches for his glass without shifting his gaze, watching Lew like a puzzle he means to solve. Blanche wants to hold her breath, make no sudden movements, pull the entire room away slowly, leave them here with nothing but each other. 

Before desert, Dick excuses himself to the bathroom and Lew watches him go, body dragging itself as far as it can without standing to follow. What they are is two trees leaning toward each other over a snow covered path, spring days, and then they’ll touch**. **

“Lewis,” she breathes out. 

“Aw, shit.” 

He runs a hand through his hair; it shakes. 

“Listen, Blanche. There’s nothing you need to say. I know I shouldn’t. I know it’s trouble.” 

She grabs at his arm to stop the tremor. 

“The way he looks at you—are you sure he doesn’t...too?” 

Lewis’ face is a wave of hope and horror. 

“No. No, he’s— He’s better than this.” 

“Have you asked him?” 

“Christ, Blanche, you can’t just ask someone something like that.” 

Her mind spins in subtleties; there has to be a way to balance the reward and risk. 

“Do not, Blanche. This isn’t a game. You can’t—” 

“Lew, you’ll always be the first queer I know, but you’re not the only one.” 

He huffs and reaches for his drink. 

“That doesn’t mean shit. Just because you made friends with 4Fs and section eights doesn’t mean you have any idea what this feels like. It’s terrifying and it’s not something you can treat like one of your debutant friends finding some captain of industry to marry.” 

“Lewis, I’m not. I will do this with gloves on**. **I will halt at danger. Do you trust me?” 

Dick rejoins the table before Lew can respond, but neither of them can cover the fight quick enough. Dick looks from Lew to Blanche and back again. 

“Seems like I missed something.”

Lewis is a wound up spring and despite disagreeing Blanche doesn’t want to see the snap. 

“Only me being an overbearing sister, as usual. Now, shall we split the chocolate tart?” 

They do and it is buttery crust and smooth ganache and Blanche can hardly taste it. Lew is quiet again, mullish like the aftermath of the spilled water. Blanche is sorry already. She doesn’t know when to stop pushing and it’s useful when it’s her job to know things, but less so when it’s Lew she keeps hurting. She’s ready to depart dinner for the museum-like rooms in their childhood home, for Lewis to stop taking her calls, for the role of friend to end uncast. 

“I feel like a nightcap.” Dick says, holding more than just Blanche’s coat out for her. “I’ll have coffee, but Lew always has bottles of Vat around the house if you don’t mind the stuff. We might even have a bottle of red wine.” 

Blanche shrugs into her coat and turns toward Lew. He’d fallen for it, thought Dick would let the squabble go and is now making a face a little like a fish. 

“Fine,” he snaps, looking away from them both, aggressively trying to find the sleeves of his coat and badly missing. “But just so everyone knows Doris sent the red and it borders on undrinkable.**” **

\------ 

“This doesn’t mean I’ve changed my mind,” Lew whispers to Blanche, three steps back on the porch as Dick opens the front door. “Whatever you think you know about him or me or any of this, you can’t just barge in with no notice and break—” 

“Christ, Lewis, I get it. I’ll be sure to formally request your permission in writing from now on. You can forget everything I’ve ever said if that will make you happy.” 

She pushes away from him, into the light of the front hall. Lewis follows, slow to shut the door behind him, to turn to face them. 

“Dick will give me the tour,” Blanche says as she forces her coat into Lewis’ arms. 

“After you.” 

Dick gestures her toward the kitchen, a kind shrug and quick smile as he holds out his coat for Lewis too. 

Lewis busies himself with stuffing the coats into the front closet, momentarily waylaid by Blanche’s ridiculous embroidered muffler. Door shut, he lingers against it because he wants to hear what Dick thinks of where they live, the places he’s proud of, the words he’ll use to describe their world within the world. But what if it’s only the things he’d change, what he won’t miss when he moves on? He can hear Blanche laughing and that’s enough to pull him from the hall. He stops on the other side of the door frame, listens. 

“Lew’s not half bad at making coffee,” Dick is saying. “Better than at the plant, anyhow. And he can fry an egg. They always break for me. My mother did teach me a handful of meals, but I’m sure Lew is sick of the rotation.” 

“There’s a family recipe for pot roast that Lew loves—well, it’s not really our family, Doris hired a cook when we were children and it was her recipe, but the secret is the horseradish.” 

“I’d like the recipe, if you have it. I doubt I can do it justice, but I’ll try.” 

“It’ll be better than Army food anyway,” Lew says as he steps into the doorway. Blanche doesn’t turn toward him, but Dick does and his face stops Lew short. Dick looks like he can’t decide if he wants to take the offer back or if he wants to throw open the front door and tell the neighbors all about it. 

“I’ll spare you the details of the crimes they committed against spaghetti,” Lew says, something to break the spell. 

Blanche snorts. 

“The dining room is through here,” Dick says smoothly, “but we haven’t used it much except for storage.” 

As Blanche follows, Lew can see her gaze linger on the kitchen chairs, how two of them are tucked close to meet at a corner, clearly the only pair used. Lew hadn’t realized quite how close they’d pulled themselves. He reaches out to readjust the chairs, but then moves them a little closer instead. 

“Oh,” he can hear Blanche say from next door. 

Lew hates the dining room. It’s where he’s been storing most of the things Kathy had packed up for him. Every time he’s tried to sort through it, he just thinks about her shutting up all these boxes, not knowing if he would ever be back to open them. 

“Maybe you should just throw it all away,” Blanche says as he finally joins them. “Then you could host and save us all from Doris.” 

Blanche is right: the things in those boxes belong to a man who didn’t come back, but he’s still not in the mood to agree with her. 

“There are things worth keeping.” 

“But if you haven’t missed them yet...” 

“There’s a lot of boxes, Blanche, and I don’t—” 

Lew shuts his mouth, hating how stubborn he sounds, how much like a child told to do his chores. 

“Lew,” Dick says, almost too patient, too kind, “if you want help you just have to ask.” 

“It’s not your stuff, so you shouldn’t have to worry about—” 

“Let me. I don’t mind.” 

Lewis can’t pretend he doesn’t know what it looks like when Dick Winters is being sincere and so he stays shut up this time. 

In the living room Blanche crosses straight to the matching chairs, runs a hand down the arm, over the dark green, the specks of gold, the walnut. 

“These are lovely.” 

“Nix picked them out. Perfect place to read after dinner.” 

Dick looks at him, soft smile, and Lew feels slower and slower, the air changing into some kind of solid. This isn’t—this all just _ sounds _ like—his mind is seeing what it wants to because Blanche had said— 

Upstairs, Blanche politely does not linger after being shown Dick’s room, but she of course steps fully into Lew’s. Lew knows it’s a mess, but he’s the only one who sees it and it’s not worth the effort of tidying just for himself. 

“My god, Lewis,” Blanche says as she reemerges, eyebrows trying to meet her hairline. “The floor is not a place to keep anything you love. Except for shoes, but even then have some self respect.” 

“It’s my room so I can keep it however I like. Maybe if you’d actually been invited down here I’d have cleaned it.” 

Lew doesn't miss how Blanche and Dick share a look of disbelief. 

“I need that nightcap now.” 

They settle in the living room**, **Blanche and Lew with whiskey, Dick with his reheated coffee. Lew finds a deck of cards in the side table and they play rummy. Well, as best as they can with someone (Dick) who keeps forgetting the rules and someone else (Blanche) who is unnervingly competitive when it comes to cards. Two rounds in Dick stops looking at his cards and starts telling Blanche about Sobel: _three miles up, three miles down_, the sound of a canteen running dry too soon, _high ho silver,_ cancelled weekend passes, afternoon spaghetti, cows loose across the countryside—

“And that’s when I was court martialed.” 

“No.” 

“Right, Nix?” 

“Saw it myself. Spelled martial with too many ‘l’s’.” 

“So what did you do?” 

Lewis feels like he just woke up. Like while he was sleeping someone recalibrated him to catalogue every movement Dick makes—the way he fans his cards (poorly), how he sets his mug gently on the saucer (never once a clink), that his frustration lives in a small hunch of the shoulder (and the hand that rubs the back of his neck**)**—and to not look away when he gets caught. 

“I lose again,” Dick says four rounds later, looking between Blanche’s cards and his with a frown. “I honestly thought I’d been doing alright this time.” 

“You almost had it that hand,” Blanche says without looking up from where she’s totaling her lead. “I’d say you’re ready to play for money.” 

“Lew, your sister is trying to rob me blind.” 

“Maybe if you’d played once in a while with me and Harry you’d have a chance now.”

Dick’s response is to drop his cards onto the floor. Lew looks at the way they spread across the carpet, wishes he could read them like tarot, know the future they’ll have, if it shuffles them together. 

When Lew looks up Dick is smiling at him, wide and steady, and his hand darts out. Lew watches his fingers close around the glass of whiskey, careless where they touch each other. Dick lifts the glass and takes a small sip. He’s looking right at Lew when he does it. 

“Penance,” he says with the smallest shrug. 

Lew has to remember how to breathe, but it’s a sport he’s never played before, two left hands. He coughs and coughs again. Damn being wrong, damn wondering and waiting and the chance he scares Dick away forever. This is not a certain slant of light, this is not his heart roguely wishing. 

“Are you alright?” 

Dick looks truly worried and Lew nods even as he continues to clear his throat. 

“I just need a glass of water,” he manages, voice rough and heart drumming. “Blanche, I trust you. Don’t cheat while I’m gone.” 

“Promise,” she says, face so full of hope Lew has to duck away from it. 

\------ 

“Fresh air,” Blanche says as soon as Lewis leaves the room, “Let’s take some. And if that sounded like a suggestion it wasn’t.” 

Dick humors her, holding the door open and then breathing deep as he leans on the railing, elbows spread wide, settled into the house like he owns it. Which Blanche supposes he as good as does**. **His hair is deeper cooper in this light; he looks younger, enough that Blanche can imagine him a boy on a farm, maybe thinking that land the only he’d ever see. That he’s made it here, that any of them made it back here, should be well enough. But the heart is a machine which runs best when full. 

“So why Nixon?” 

“Excuse me?” 

His arms slip a little and there’s an alarm that doesn’t raise past his eyes, stalls there, waits for the next wave. 

“New Jersey, I mean.” 

“It’s not everyday you’re offered a job.” 

“There’s exactly one thing Nixon, New Jersey has that you couldn’t have gotten anywhere else and he’s inside, presumably trying not to be sick.” 

“Nix was part of it,” he admits, grin placed small. “Familiar face never hurts.” 

“Not a lot of people want to be familiar with Lew. Well, not a lot of people want to stay familiar.” 

“I guess I’m a bad penny.” 

She laughs. 

“Richard Winters, to Lew I’d say you’re one of the shiniest pennies around.” 

The suspicion, the fear, the flight, it’s still captured tight in his gaze. Dick is a man who hadn’t expected to be seen like this today (or any day). There’s tightrope at his feet and the question now is how many steps he’ll take across it. If he’ll trust Blanche to catch him when he falls. 

“If I hadn’t said yes, there’s a long list of other men he would have offered the same.” 

“Something, surely, but not the same.”

Dick turns away, looks over the yard, handsome face leaning into the dark. She watches his hands, how they want to hold, but don’t have anything to reach for here. 

“Blanche, I appreciate that you care about your brother, but—” 

“Some free advice about Lewis,” she cuts cleanly over him. “Take it or leave it. Lew doesn’t know what he wants. He’ll say he does, he’ll be adamant even, but the truth is he’ll be happy wherever you want to go. Nixon’s just a place Lew doesn’t know how to leave. He hates everything about it, but at least he knows his name here and that’s the best offer he’s had so far.”

It’s spread, oil spill to his shoulders, his wrists, the foot that drops back to steady himself. He’s a man in a fight again, cornered and coiled. Maybe she should be afraid. Maybe she would be if she hadn't seen the way they live together in this house, a little too fragile, but oh so devoted. 

“Make him a better one.” 

Dick pushes away, off the porch and into the grass, plan to gain speed until he’s gone, but he swings to a stop instead, tilts his head up. Blanche follows the gaze, half moon and spilled pail of stars, impossible and perfect in their breadth and distance. 

“I don’t think I’d know how.” 

Blanche looks away from the expanse to find Dick returned to the foot of the steps, hands in his pockets, fight left buried under the lawn. 

**“**Lew’s easy**.”**

The pink he turns is visible, even in this light. 

\------ 

The world keeps spinning as it has been, slowly away from the days of war, but it turns differently now, hints towards hope. Blanche won’t tell Lewis what she said that night (she’d only placed a hand on his cheek, whispered, “You’ll see”), but whatever it was Dick’s still here and that means more every day it stays true. For the first few months Lew was the one inching closer and closer, but he’s dug in now, in the home they share, in this maybe-not-so-dreary-after-all town, and it’s Dick’s turn to cross the open ground. Waiting isn’t any less difficult when it’s for something you want, it’s just a different kind of anticipation, sweet instead of acid. 

Weekends, Lew stays awake too late, summer in full glow. He sits on the porch and answers the letters he’s ignored. He reads the paper and a book or two that Dick leaves pointedly on this side of the kitchen table. He tells Dick every story he can think of about growing up (except the one about Provincetown). He waits for the night when instead of telling him _ sleep well _, Dick will touch his shoulder, meet his eyes when Lew looks up, nod slow and steady and lead him inside, up the stairs, to bed. In the meantime, Lew collects the folded papers and the empty glasses and finally slips to sleep with the sun. 

“I got you a present,” Dick says. 

Lew jerks awake. Dick is standing at the end of his bed, hands in his pockets. It must have rained while he slept, the smell of fresh dirt creeping in through the window. Dick’s hair is combed infuriatingly straight. Lew burrows back into the sheets. 

“Is it more sleep?” 

“It’s past noon.” 

Lew peers reluctantly out of his cocoon. Dick is still standing there, glowing even, in the midday light. Lew has to close his eyes again because this is the worst of the want, no regulations or other people to mark them. Being alone with Dick has not lost its novelty. It’s just gained danger. 

“So it is,” he says, twisting away check the clock on his bedside table. “Fine, where’s my present?” 

“You have to come outside, Nix.” 

“I don’t need the present that much.” 

Dick laughs then, like Lew knew he would. Like he needed. 

“I’ll see you downstairs.” 

Lew dresses wildly (he’s almost sure this is yesterday's shirt) and jumps down the last three steps. Dick is waiting for him at the landing, cup of coffee and eyebrows raised. 

“Backyard.” 

Lewis strides to the back door and throws it open into the sunshine. Their backyard has a high fence, an apple tree, and somehow rose bushes which bloomed despite neither of them doing a thing; it’s all the same as yesterday. 

“If the present is yard work, I’m returning it.” 

“Don’t ruin this,” Dick says. “Sit. And close your eyes.” 

And so he does. Because of who’s asking. Because Dick is a man of reason. Because Lewis wants whatever Dick will give, even if it is a clever ruse to do yard work. Lew can hear Dick round the house, the snick of a car door. His return bringing with it a weird scrambling noise, something like an animal, maybe, and then an impossibly small bark. 

His eyes open at the same time Dick places a puppy into his hands. She’s a husky mix, spots and green, green eyes. A whole mountain alive in there. She’s squirming to get closer, paws up on his shoulder. He grips her tight, face automatic towards where she’s aiming to lick. 

“You bought me a dog?” his voice sounds far away (like it’s on that mountain too). 

Dick Winters is standing in the backyard of the house Lewis choose for them. He’s wearing Lewis’ favorite shirt, a blue one, with a low collar. He notices now that Dick isn’t wearing shoes. The grass is new and bright around his toes. 

“I bought us a dog,” Dick says, absolute and simple and true. 

Lew stands up, the puppy comes with, tucked against his shoulder, her small claws catching on the collar of his shirt, on his skin. He crosses the half step and hopes all the neighbors are minding their own business, because he reaches out, free hand to the back of Dick’s neck and they drag each other closer. 

Lew hasn’t kissed anyone since France. Hell, he’s not sure he’s ever kissed anyone properly before because he’s never felt this close to another person, but they’ve always been the best versions of themselves with each other, haven’t they?

Dick pulls back, slow and with hands lingering on Lew’s waist, on his throat. Lew feels lit up from the inside, like if the sun set now, he could be light enough for all of Nixon. Dick reaches to scratch the puppy behind her ears. 

“We have to name her.” 

Lewis looks into the staggering blue of his eyes, at the freckles and the curving smile. He scratches the puppy too, makes sure to touch Dick’s hand as he does. Lew thinks about the bed they’ll share, dog racing them down the stairs in the morning. Reaching across the kitchen table for his hand instead of the salt. The footprints all three of them will leave in the snow. How this is the home they have today, but that anywhere they go together will be one too. He thinks about faulty bombs and lost men and Beethoven. 

“Victory,” he says. 

**Author's Note:**

> While I did use some historically accurate information about the Nixon family (that iron bolt story is unfortunately true), many details, especially those around the interpersonal relationships, are fictional. 
> 
> Title from Other Side by Metric
> 
> I'm on twitter at and_thenextday, a collection of tweets about all the fics I'll never finish and this one, which somehow I did.


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